Tour De France Stage Seven Standings, Results: Sylvain Chavanel Regains The Lead

The tour de France has started to get serious as the race leaves the flat lands and moves into the foothills of the Alps, providing us with a wonderful hors d’oeuvre of the action to come over the next few days.

Stage Seven takes in three category two climbs, including a mountain-top finish at the ski station at Les Rousses. It should have been the first real test for the riders, but the events of the first three days makes a mockery of that statement.

As has become the tradition, there was an almost immediate breakaway that formed around the leader of the climbing points and wearer of the polka dot jersey, Jerome Pineau of team Quick Step and German champion Christian Knees of Milram.

Pineau continued to amass climbing points as the other members of the breakaway simply let him go. At one point, the lead was up over eight minutes, however, as has been the case throughout this year’s tour, the peloton gradually reeled the leaders in.

At the back of the peloton, a different story was unfolding as the sprinters slowly became unhitched and started their battle to avoid the elimination time cutoff.

One of the first to break loose at the back was Robbie McEwen who was suffering thanks to a quite remarkable incident at the conclusion of yesterday’s Stage Six.

As Mark Cavendish crossed the line to win the stage, a cameraman leaped out from behind the barrier to chase him, but leaped straight into the path of McEwen who was still travelling at 60 km/h and was thrown over the handlebars to land on the very same hip that he hurt in his Stage Two fall.

The penultimate climb of the day, over the Col de la Croix de la Serra mountain pass, shattered the peloton with riders attacking a falling behind with a lot of energy being expended to survive the climb whilst the nagging certainty of a second, almost identical, climb still awaits the riders.

The final climb of the day, up to the peak of Les Rousses was where the stage was finally sorted out. Sylvain Chavanel went out hard to join his teammate Pineau; however the climb and pressure of maintaining the breakaway had proved too much for the Frenchman who had started to slip back.

None of the main players were particularly phased by the climb, but nor did they consider Chavanel’s lead worthy of expending too much energy trying to bring him back into the fold. Regardless, it will be a significantly different leader board at the conclusion of today’s stage.

It became increasingly clear that the GC contenders were thinking ahead to the next three stages through the Alps, whereas Chavanel and young Spaniard and tour debutante, Rafael Valls Ferri of Footon Servetto, fought it out for the stage victory.

Chavanel prevailed to take out his second stage in this year’s race by almost a full minute and he reclaimed the Maillot Jaune, with Fabian Cancellara finishing over 14 minutes behind. The GC leader board is starting to get cleared out and the big guns are starting to crowd the top ten places, with only Arstrong sitting outside of the top ten in 14th place.

Tomorrow’s stage hits the serious mountains, with the first two category one climbs of this year’s Tour. That will really sort out the pretenders.

Standings after Stage Seven

1. CHAVANEL S.          33h 01' 23"
2. EVANS C.               01' 25"
3. HESJEDAL R.           01' 32"
4. SCHLECK A.            01' 55"
5. VINOKOUROV A.       02' 17"
6. CONTADOR A.          02' 26"
7. VAN DEN BROECK J.  02' 28"
8. ROCHE N.                02' 28"
9. VAN SUMMEREN J.    02' 33"
10. MENCHOV D.          02' 35"